Photographic printing facilities which can provide photo prints to customers who come to the facility are wide spread throughout the U.S., generally at stores such as photographic equipment stores and chain discount stores. Printing orders may be received from customers that are located at the photograph printing facility, and can also be received electronically over the internet or from kiosks. The photographic printing facility generally provides various printing options for the customer to choose from. For example, the customer may select a “due-by” time for the prints, for example within one hour or overnight, and the type and size of paper that the photographs are to be printed on. Currently, the operator of the photograph printing machine usually arranges the print jobs to provide the photographs at the “due-by” time selected by the customer.
In some situations, a combination of a plurality of print orders can create a scheduling problem for the photograph printing machine if the operator is not able to meet all of the due-by times for all of the print orders received by the photograph printing facility.
What is needed is a method for better utilization of the photographic printing machine compared to the method used by the operator of the photographic printing machine.